CEO Benioff says Salesforce will hire 2,000 people to sell AI products

Sales force The company will hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to customers, CEO Marc Benioff said Tuesday, double the number the company indicated it was planning to add a month ago.

The cloud software company, which targets salespeople, marketers and customer service agents, is among many technology companies hoping to boost revenue through generative AI features.

“We’re adding another 2,000 salespeople to help sell these products,” Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco. “We’ve already gotten 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 jobs we’ve opened. It’s amazing.”

Benioff said last month Bloomberg It plans to hire 1,000 sales representatives focused on artificial intelligence.

On Tuesday, Salesforce said second generation Agentforce’s technology for creating and running AI agents will become available to customers in February 2025. Agentforce will be able to process complex questions in Salesforce’s Slack communications app, based on all available data.

Salesforce is ramping up its AI sales team nearly two years after announcing it Demobilization More than 7,000 employees to better reflect economic conditions. As of January 31, 2024, the number of employees was 72,682, down about 1% from the previous two years, according to filings.

Benioff said Salesforce’s home page now features an experimental AI agent that can answer users’ queries about the company’s products. Salesforce customers who need assistance can visit the chat site Help page Which has 32,000 conversations a week. About 5,000 of them are being scaled up to humans as a result of current AI capabilities, down from 10,000 before, Benioff said.

Microsoft It sold a series of AI tools under the Copilot brand. But if you check Microsoft’s website to learn how to automate customer support, Benioff said, “you won’t be able to find it.”

Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.